Hollywood's tatty glory on show in Manson Family murders movie

In "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood", Brad Pitt strides through the broken down "cesspit" of a ranch and all eyes are on him. Not just in the movie theatre but up there on screen from a dozen or more hiding spots in the surrounding broken down buildings.

He doesn't see them, but they see him. Charles Manson's bunch of followers, "The Manson Family" are watching but hiding away, waiting to see if he is a threat.

This is the Spahn Ranch, owned by George Spahn which, in real life, he bought from silent screen cowboy star William S. Hart.

A few days earlier Manson and others had been arrested. He was suspected and eventually convicted of being the ringleader in the gruesome murder of seven people in two separate attacks. The movie star Sharon Tate, played by Margot Robbie, one of the victims, was eight months pregnant. It became known as The Manson Murders.

"All over Los Angeles there was fear, there was terror, there was uncertainty because nobody knew, until they were arrested, who had committed these dastardly murders," Davis said.

"They had happened in two safe neighborhoods. People were saying my God if it can happen here, in Beverly Hills in two posh neighborhoods, it could happen anywhere."

In his book "Manson Exposed" Davis writes: "I had visited several real Western movie sets-some in Mexico and some in Hollywood-but this didn't resemble any movie set I'd ever seen. This was the neglected dirt street of a true ghost town. A couple of mangy dogs eyed me suspiciously. The buildings were empty and dilapidated. In the middle of the road, a rusting trailer looked ready for the nearest dump. Spahn's Movie Ranch, long past its glory days as the number-one location for Hollywood Westerns, was on life support."

Watch the movie and you'll see that Tarantino very likely read the book and took in Davis's words. The ranch that Davis saw in 1969, 50 years on, is now onscreen.

"It was a shocking chilling place," Davis said. "When I saw the movie it was duplicated because Tarantino captures the whole feel of the Spahn Movie Ranch. It was a decaying cesspit of a place by then. It was exactly the same place we now see on screen. Run down, smelly, flies and some of the Manson girls running around half naked."

Davis had himself a worldwide scoop. The followers told him of their love and admiration for the man they called Charlie, who it would later be revealed, had ordered his followers to go into the two Los Angeles houses and murder everyone inside.

Davis got the followers talking but it soon became clear these innocent looking hippy kids were anything but.

"Some of the girls were scary. I mean they were little girls with sweet voices. One of them sang to me 'Hey Ivor. Do you know what it would be like to have a knife slit down your throat?' She said it in a sort of choir girl's voice," he said.

Davis went home that afternoon and gathered his wife and baby and moved them out of their house for a while because he knew what the Manson family could do.

"Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" re-creates, to near perfection, Los Angeles in the late 1960s. While the Manson murders plays a large part in the picture it runs side by side with the story of the descending career of cowboy star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his ever-supportive sidekick Cliff Booth (Pitt). Cliff works as Rick's stunt double although more lately he's his driver, sounding board and part time psychologist.

In the movie, Cliff ends up at the Spahn Ranch after picking up one of Manson's "girls" hitchhiking in Los Angeles.

The scenes of Cliff cruising through Hollywood, as one critic put it "makes driving through Los Angeles look like a beautiful experience."

Tarantino got council permission to close large sections of Hollywood Boulevard for the shoot. And there was no need to recreate any of that. Luckily for him a lot of it is still there, just as he wanted it. Down at heel, tatty, little changed since the '60s.

You can relive the opening scenes of the movie yourself by having lunch or dinner or maybe just cocktails at the legendary Hollywood Boulevard restaurant Musso and Franks. There was no need for Tarantino's set dressers to work it over first. What you see in the film is what you see in real life in all its tatty glory.

The movie received a rapturous response when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May and so far in the US has made $130 million. There's a lot more to come as it slowly opens around the world, including Australia this week.

And already we're seeing the not-so-surprising headlines: "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is the year's first surefire Oscar best picture nominee".